


The Flames Went Higher

by Lauren (notalwaysweak)



Category: Big Bang Theory
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-04
Updated: 2012-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-28 21:47:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/312502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwaysweak/pseuds/Lauren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sheldon gets his tattoo. Same AU as "The Bear Population of Southern California".</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Flames Went Higher

**Author's Note:**

  * For [damalur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/damalur/gifts), [halfeatenmoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfeatenmoon/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Bear Population of the Southern California Area (We’ll Laugh About This When We’re Older)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/296849) by [Lauren (notalwaysweak)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwaysweak/pseuds/Lauren). 



> Big Bang Theory characters do not belong to me and I am making no money from this work of fan fiction.
> 
> My deepest thanks to muirwolf for the beta!
> 
> This is for damalur because it goes with the original, and for halfeatenmoon because of her #1 New Year's Resolution. (Here's hoping it happens. And #4. But, you know, no pressure.)
> 
> * * *

The tattoo is not a drunken whim; Sheldon does not have drunken whims, but nonetheless he’s downed a couple of drinks before entering the studio, purely as an anesthetic, as per the research he’s done into this particular process. This commemoration has been his intention since he first got the letter informing him that he had a literary agent willing to represent him, since speculations became reality, before the publication and the nomination and the win.

He’s spent the last few weeks visiting the studio to discuss the design with the artist; she is a tiny, fine-boned woman with fearless hands and a thousand colors covering her skin. She loves his idea; initially presented as a rough sketch and a half-dozen printed pictures, she transmutes his thoughts into her image. His image, her ink.

His ink.

The artist carefully applies the stencil, shockingly purple against his skin. The nib rests just above his index fingernail, the long barrel running up over his knuckles before the feather flares out and curls around his wrist. Sheldon smiles in surprise at how much he likes the look of it even before the actual ink has been applied, and the artist grins back at him.

“This is where it gets interesting,” she says, reaching out to flip on the radio beside their chairs. “Let me know if you need me to stop.”

The most startling part of the experience is how loud the needle is, a drilling whine like a dentist’s visit. Sheldon hates going to the dentist because he can never quite be sure that the dentist isn’t giving him a mouthful of germs, no matter how many times he rinses and spits. He surprises himself by not being nearly so concerned about sterility here; nearly every step involves swabs and alcohol and gloves, and he thoroughly approves. Even the armrest that he stretches his hand and forearm along is covered in disposable wrap.

He can understand why she needs the radio, a country station that usually he would find execrable but tonight isn’t too bad. That oversized mosquito-whine of the needle would drive a person mad if it was all they had to listen to all day.

Then she lowers the needle to his skin and Sheldon forgets all about the competing sounds of the giant mosquito-whine and Shania Twain. All his attention is utterly focused on the feeling of the tattoo being applied and how much he wants to yank his hand away and run. This, too, is something he’s researched online, but the only thing everyone can agree upon is that no two experiences are the same.

Sheldon is pretty sure his experience is somewhat akin to how crabs feel while being boiled alive, only he at least has some small respite every time the artist lifts the needle to blot away blood and ink.

The internet opinions he has read vary as to which body parts hurt the most to be tattooed, although there is a general agreement that anywhere over the bone is bad. Sheldon feels as though he’s not just being tattooed over the bone, but through it, as though the needle is piercing right through the outer surface and into the marrow. This is ridiculous considering how little marrow the phalanges contain, but right now he’s willing to think whatever ludicrous thoughts come his way to take his mind off the notion that if he looks down, he’ll see that the needle’s gone clean through his finger.

 

Shania Twain gives way to Shawn Colvin gives way to Sheryl Crow. Just when Sheldon’s wondering whether it’s a prerequisite for country singers to have names starting with the letter “S”, and also whether his hand is going to fall off, “Ring of Fire” starts playing and his artist reaches his wrist, which is the sort of coincidence he’d prefer didn’t happen to him.

“Did you make the final decision on whether or not you wanted color shading on this, or just black and gray?” she asks. Sheldon wishes she wouldn’t tap her foot along to the music while she has a needle in his skin.

“What about orange?” he says tentatively.

“Like a phoenix quill or something? Cool.” She gives him another grin that is a little unsettling considering her hands are splattered with his blood. “I can do a little bit to give you an idea and we can always go over it with the black if it doesn’t suit. Besides, orange is way easier to laser than green if you end up hating it in a year’s time.”

“I won’t,” Sheldon assures her, all too aware that she has a pointy object very close to a number of his veins.

“That’s what I like to hear,” she says, and bends her head again to her work.

He hadn’t thought of the phoenix idea when he’d suggested orange, truth be told, but considering how spectacularly his physics career burned and how brightly his writing career has arisen, she’s right, really.

 

He’s in the chair for an hour and a half, all told. The outline is fine and black; the shading looks as though someone spilled a little sunset across his skin. It’s brighter than he imagined but the artist assures him it will fade as the tattoo heals.

“Especially the parts that are all bloody,” she says matter-of-factly.

It turns out that the last part, where she scrubs at his skin with wet paper towels to remove the last of the blood and ink streaking it, is the most painful, not least because the alcohol has well and truly worn off. Sheldon dutifully bites his lip through it; it’s worth it for the soothing coolness of the sweet-smelling cream that the artist applies. That’s the last thing before she cling-wraps his arm, a strange purpose for a mundane thing; a fitting purpose for a strange experience.

“Don’t scratch,” she says. “Keep applying the cream, at least three times a day but more if you feel like it. Don’t scratch. Don’t get it wet for the first twenty-four hours. Don’t scratch.”

“I won’t scratch,” Sheldon tells her loftily.

“You’ll want to.” She holds out her own rainbow arms. “I know.”

“I’ll bow to your superior expertise on this occasion.”

Sheldon can’t understand why she bursts out laughing until two days later when he wants to tear his skin off with the sheer maddening itch; then he thinks he knows why she laughed.

He manages to keep from scratching, though it’s a close thing. When the beautiful finished image finally emerges from scabbing and peeling and flaking skin, he’s glad he kept his fingernails to themselves. For the first few weeks he has the tattoo he gets distracted by the way it looks when he types, how the feather flutters with a twist of his wrist.

Slowly, surely, it becomes a part of him, as unremarkable as his eyes or lips or hair.

Unremarkable, that is, except to other people.

 

Then there’s the night at the bar. The young blonde woman who threatens to call him Ernest. She has a tattoo as well – the Chinese character for “courage”, although she doesn’t show him and the pinking of her cheeks indicates that it’s somewhere private – and she’s loud and draws attention to him and he wishes she’d leave him be.

But her finger traces the line of the quill, fingertip to knuckle to wrist, and Sheldon feels a slow burn that goes all the way down to the bone. A burn that this time is not painful; a heat, he finds, from which he does not wish to recoil.


End file.
